i got the half life 2 demo and i have all the settings on maximum, except the anisotropic and FSAA are on something medium, and i don't see specular highlights on anything but i see environment mapping on some things. when i put the flashlight on i see the diffuse stuff lighting up but i don't see the specular highlight from the flashlight at all. i see sometimes some spots on things that look kinda like specular highlights but they are actually just bright pixels in the environment map. i could not see that any of the creatures had specular maps to reflect the environment map until i noticed a fault because it was really dark in some place but the environment map was not dark also to match with that, so it showed up much more obviously. don't tell me they didn't even program this feature.

and they shouldn't even consider to render the highlights into the environment maps unless they are using HDR.

In the FEAR demo i see the specular highlights on things just fine expecially with the flashlight on and in some places the blood looks the most realistic i've seen in a game so far except on some things it looks totally wrong and has no specular effects at all or has some other weirdness going on.

7318@Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 2:34 am :

half life 2 don't have specular maps no? it only uses normalmaps on models, but i think it lacks specular maps, instead of it uses environment maping

bkt@Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:07 am :

Post a screenshot or 2, and I'm sure people will be able to tell you if it's all good or not.

mac@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:40 pm :

no!!! no specular maps nooooo!!!! how could valve do this.. i mean damn the game totaly sucks if there are no specular maps and everything looks wrong! noooo! *cough*...

iceheart@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:54 pm :

Actually, there's environment mapped specular maps sometimes (this is why cs_office looks like it's all made out of ice in CS:S...), but I'm not sure I saw any in the HL2 SP game. It's last-gen tech either way, who cares about HL2 .

ViPr@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:18 pm :

it seems it has specular maps but they reflect only the environment maps and not the dynamic lights.

i'm pissed off at Valve Software now.

Rayne@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:24 pm :

Source engine uses textures to mask reflections (using environmental mapping)... Them really looks like specular maps, but are only used to tell the engine "where to reflect cubemaps" on a given surface..

I think cubemaps look much better than clunky old Blinn shading in many circumstances, while not being dynamic. The pop between two cubemaps is a bit jarring though.

grazzhoppa@Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 2:58 am :

Source may not have specular maps, but it has something that fakes it very well. The snow texture in Day of Defeat: Source has a specular effect.

I'm not sure how it's done, but some textures react to your flashlight as if they had a specular map. I think it has to do with the way they faked the blooming as you look into the sun. I want to say tone-mapping, but I'm not positive if that's being used.

Although I think you can't get that effect on anything animated, as no NPCs or other players are affected by the flashlight, which is annoying in multiplayer maps with dark places.

And with their HDR, they can get the effect of having certain areas on a texture brighten/bloom more than others. It looks awkward in places where the blooming area is abruptly cut off in shadowed areas, but it still pulls of the effect of a specular map fairly well because it changes it's brightness as you move.

Here you can see no specular effect on the hands or the gun. On the edges of the gun, there's some gray areas where the paint is worn away that are baked in the diffuse map but don't react to lighting conditions like a specular mapped gun would.

One positive of not having specular maps is that nothing I've seen on that engine suffers from the "it's made of plastic" look that's hard to avoid with real-time lighting + specular mapped engines.

The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 5:31 am :

ViPr wrote:

i'm pissed off at Valve Software now.

so you're pissed at them NOW even though they didn't have this on release OR in the preview videos? You're getting slow in your old age. ;D

grazzhoppa wrote:

One positive of not having specular maps is that nothing I've seen on that engine suffers from the "it's made of plastic" look that's hard to avoid with real-time lighting + specular mapped engines.

I've never thought that about the doom 3 engine (since that's what people say about it). Almost everything in real life has specular maps ( ).

But Valve probley did speed up the engine a little by leaving this out. I wish they put in IK though.

I think cubemaps look much better than clunky old Blinn shading in many circumstances, while not being dynamic. The pop between two cubemaps is a bit jarring though.

In Cg you can fake *reflections* with specular maps. The pure *Specularity* thing that even DooM3 has is a way to obtain highlights without the need to calculate reflections (too slow to calculate in realtime)...

There are pro and cons with those tecniques: normal specularity calculation looks cool since is dynamic, but with environmental mapping you obviously obtain cool details that the first method can't example: the blue of the sky in a outdoor scene. If the floor is reflective, you must see a blue tint of the sky in theory...

rich_is_bored@Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:35 am :

There's a place for specularity in the scheme of things as reflections aren't always crystal clear. Pure reflections on everything would result in complaints like "everything looks like chrome".

True, in real life specularity is the result of reflections from the environment. In that sense, specularity is fake. It is not a real physical property.

However, the reflection simulated by specular maps is supposed to represent the distorted reflections caused by mircoscopic surface bumps.

As you know, not all surfaces are as smooth as glass so in cases where reflections shouldn't be mirror-like, and performance is an issue (as in the case of real-time rendering), specularity is suitable.

Black Dog@Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 3:59 pm :

The problem of over-crisp reflections are easy to solve with filtered cubemaps and decent normalmaps and reflection masks. It's hard to get a specific specular falloff that way, but avoiding the chrome look is pretty easy.

Blitz@Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:46 am :

I personally prefer the look of the Cube-mapped environment reflection to straight up specularity.

I bet if you took a look at the SDK you could probably hack "proper" specularity into Source since it already supports the alpha channel for the cubemapped surfaces. I don't know why you'd want to since the way it works already looks excellent.

ViPr@Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:25 am :

i have a GeForce 6800 256mb. latest drivers and everything.

i got the half life 2 demo and i have all the settings on maximum, except the anisotropic and FSAA are on something medium, and i don't see specular highlights on anything but i see environment mapping on some things. when i put the flashlight on i see the diffuse stuff lighting up but i don't see the specular highlight from the flashlight at all. i see sometimes some spots on things that look kinda like specular highlights but they are actually just bright pixels in the environment map. i could not see that any of the creatures had specular maps to reflect the environment map until i noticed a fault because it was really dark in some place but the environment map was not dark also to match with that, so it showed up much more obviously. don't tell me they didn't even program this feature.

and they shouldn't even consider to render the highlights into the environment maps unless they are using HDR.

In the FEAR demo i see the specular highlights on things just fine expecially with the flashlight on and in some places the blood looks the most realistic i've seen in a game so far except on some things it looks totally wrong and has no specular effects at all or has some other weirdness going on.

7318@Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 2:34 am :

half life 2 don't have specular maps no? it only uses normalmaps on models, but i think it lacks specular maps, instead of it uses environment maping

bkt@Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:07 am :

Post a screenshot or 2, and I'm sure people will be able to tell you if it's all good or not.

mac@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:40 pm :

no!!! no specular maps nooooo!!!! how could valve do this.. i mean damn the game totaly sucks if there are no specular maps and everything looks wrong! noooo! *cough*...

iceheart@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:54 pm :

Actually, there's environment mapped specular maps sometimes (this is why cs_office looks like it's all made out of ice in CS:S...), but I'm not sure I saw any in the HL2 SP game. It's last-gen tech either way, who cares about HL2 .

ViPr@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:18 pm :

it seems it has specular maps but they reflect only the environment maps and not the dynamic lights.

i'm pissed off at Valve Software now.

Rayne@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:24 pm :

Source engine uses textures to mask reflections (using environmental mapping)... Them really looks like specular maps, but are only used to tell the engine "where to reflect cubemaps" on a given surface..

I think cubemaps look much better than clunky old Blinn shading in many circumstances, while not being dynamic. The pop between two cubemaps is a bit jarring though.

grazzhoppa@Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 2:58 am :

Source may not have specular maps, but it has something that fakes it very well. The snow texture in Day of Defeat: Source has a specular effect.

I'm not sure how it's done, but some textures react to your flashlight as if they had a specular map. I think it has to do with the way they faked the blooming as you look into the sun. I want to say tone-mapping, but I'm not positive if that's being used.

Although I think you can't get that effect on anything animated, as no NPCs or other players are affected by the flashlight, which is annoying in multiplayer maps with dark places.

And with their HDR, they can get the effect of having certain areas on a texture brighten/bloom more than others. It looks awkward in places where the blooming area is abruptly cut off in shadowed areas, but it still pulls of the effect of a specular map fairly well because it changes it's brightness as you move.

Here you can see no specular effect on the hands or the gun. On the edges of the gun, there's some gray areas where the paint is worn away that are baked in the diffuse map but don't react to lighting conditions like a specular mapped gun would.

One positive of not having specular maps is that nothing I've seen on that engine suffers from the "it's made of plastic" look that's hard to avoid with real-time lighting + specular mapped engines.

The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 5:31 am :

ViPr wrote:

i'm pissed off at Valve Software now.

so you're pissed at them NOW even though they didn't have this on release OR in the preview videos? You're getting slow in your old age. ;D

grazzhoppa wrote:

One positive of not having specular maps is that nothing I've seen on that engine suffers from the "it's made of plastic" look that's hard to avoid with real-time lighting + specular mapped engines.

I've never thought that about the doom 3 engine (since that's what people say about it). Almost everything in real life has specular maps ( ).

But Valve probley did speed up the engine a little by leaving this out. I wish they put in IK though.

I think cubemaps look much better than clunky old Blinn shading in many circumstances, while not being dynamic. The pop between two cubemaps is a bit jarring though.

In Cg you can fake *reflections* with specular maps. The pure *Specularity* thing that even DooM3 has is a way to obtain highlights without the need to calculate reflections (too slow to calculate in realtime)...

There are pro and cons with those tecniques: normal specularity calculation looks cool since is dynamic, but with environmental mapping you obviously obtain cool details that the first method can't example: the blue of the sky in a outdoor scene. If the floor is reflective, you must see a blue tint of the sky in theory...

rich_is_bored@Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:35 am :

There's a place for specularity in the scheme of things as reflections aren't always crystal clear. Pure reflections on everything would result in complaints like "everything looks like chrome".

True, in real life specularity is the result of reflections from the environment. In that sense, specularity is fake. It is not a real physical property.

However, the reflection simulated by specular maps is supposed to represent the distorted reflections caused by mircoscopic surface bumps.

As you know, not all surfaces are as smooth as glass so in cases where reflections shouldn't be mirror-like, and performance is an issue (as in the case of real-time rendering), specularity is suitable.

Black Dog@Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 3:59 pm :

The problem of over-crisp reflections are easy to solve with filtered cubemaps and decent normalmaps and reflection masks. It's hard to get a specific specular falloff that way, but avoiding the chrome look is pretty easy.

Blitz@Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:46 am :

I personally prefer the look of the Cube-mapped environment reflection to straight up specularity.

I bet if you took a look at the SDK you could probably hack "proper" specularity into Source since it already supports the alpha channel for the cubemapped surfaces. I don't know why you'd want to since the way it works already looks excellent.

ViPr@Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:25 am :

i have a GeForce 6800 256mb. latest drivers and everything.

i got the half life 2 demo and i have all the settings on maximum, except the anisotropic and FSAA are on something medium, and i don't see specular highlights on anything but i see environment mapping on some things. when i put the flashlight on i see the diffuse stuff lighting up but i don't see the specular highlight from the flashlight at all. i see sometimes some spots on things that look kinda like specular highlights but they are actually just bright pixels in the environment map. i could not see that any of the creatures had specular maps to reflect the environment map until i noticed a fault because it was really dark in some place but the environment map was not dark also to match with that, so it showed up much more obviously. don't tell me they didn't even program this feature.

and they shouldn't even consider to render the highlights into the environment maps unless they are using HDR.

In the FEAR demo i see the specular highlights on things just fine expecially with the flashlight on and in some places the blood looks the most realistic i've seen in a game so far except on some things it looks totally wrong and has no specular effects at all or has some other weirdness going on.

7318@Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 2:34 am :

half life 2 don't have specular maps no? it only uses normalmaps on models, but i think it lacks specular maps, instead of it uses environment maping

bkt@Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:07 am :

Post a screenshot or 2, and I'm sure people will be able to tell you if it's all good or not.

mac@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:40 pm :

no!!! no specular maps nooooo!!!! how could valve do this.. i mean damn the game totaly sucks if there are no specular maps and everything looks wrong! noooo! *cough*...

iceheart@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:54 pm :

Actually, there's environment mapped specular maps sometimes (this is why cs_office looks like it's all made out of ice in CS:S...), but I'm not sure I saw any in the HL2 SP game. It's last-gen tech either way, who cares about HL2 .

ViPr@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:18 pm :

it seems it has specular maps but they reflect only the environment maps and not the dynamic lights.

i'm pissed off at Valve Software now.

Rayne@Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:24 pm :

Source engine uses textures to mask reflections (using environmental mapping)... Them really looks like specular maps, but are only used to tell the engine "where to reflect cubemaps" on a given surface..

I think cubemaps look much better than clunky old Blinn shading in many circumstances, while not being dynamic. The pop between two cubemaps is a bit jarring though.

grazzhoppa@Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 2:58 am :

Source may not have specular maps, but it has something that fakes it very well. The snow texture in Day of Defeat: Source has a specular effect.

I'm not sure how it's done, but some textures react to your flashlight as if they had a specular map. I think it has to do with the way they faked the blooming as you look into the sun. I want to say tone-mapping, but I'm not positive if that's being used.

Although I think you can't get that effect on anything animated, as no NPCs or other players are affected by the flashlight, which is annoying in multiplayer maps with dark places.

And with their HDR, they can get the effect of having certain areas on a texture brighten/bloom more than others. It looks awkward in places where the blooming area is abruptly cut off in shadowed areas, but it still pulls of the effect of a specular map fairly well because it changes it's brightness as you move.

Here you can see no specular effect on the hands or the gun. On the edges of the gun, there's some gray areas where the paint is worn away that are baked in the diffuse map but don't react to lighting conditions like a specular mapped gun would.

One positive of not having specular maps is that nothing I've seen on that engine suffers from the "it's made of plastic" look that's hard to avoid with real-time lighting + specular mapped engines.

The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 5:31 am :

ViPr wrote:

i'm pissed off at Valve Software now.

so you're pissed at them NOW even though they didn't have this on release OR in the preview videos? You're getting slow in your old age. ;D

grazzhoppa wrote:

One positive of not having specular maps is that nothing I've seen on that engine suffers from the "it's made of plastic" look that's hard to avoid with real-time lighting + specular mapped engines.

I've never thought that about the doom 3 engine (since that's what people say about it). Almost everything in real life has specular maps ( ).

But Valve probley did speed up the engine a little by leaving this out. I wish they put in IK though.

I think cubemaps look much better than clunky old Blinn shading in many circumstances, while not being dynamic. The pop between two cubemaps is a bit jarring though.

In Cg you can fake *reflections* with specular maps. The pure *Specularity* thing that even DooM3 has is a way to obtain highlights without the need to calculate reflections (too slow to calculate in realtime)...

There are pro and cons with those tecniques: normal specularity calculation looks cool since is dynamic, but with environmental mapping you obviously obtain cool details that the first method can't example: the blue of the sky in a outdoor scene. If the floor is reflective, you must see a blue tint of the sky in theory...

rich_is_bored@Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:35 am :

There's a place for specularity in the scheme of things as reflections aren't always crystal clear. Pure reflections on everything would result in complaints like "everything looks like chrome".

True, in real life specularity is the result of reflections from the environment. In that sense, specularity is fake. It is not a real physical property.

However, the reflection simulated by specular maps is supposed to represent the distorted reflections caused by mircoscopic surface bumps.

As you know, not all surfaces are as smooth as glass so in cases where reflections shouldn't be mirror-like, and performance is an issue (as in the case of real-time rendering), specularity is suitable.

Black Dog@Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 3:59 pm :

The problem of over-crisp reflections are easy to solve with filtered cubemaps and decent normalmaps and reflection masks. It's hard to get a specific specular falloff that way, but avoiding the chrome look is pretty easy.

Blitz@Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:46 am :

I personally prefer the look of the Cube-mapped environment reflection to straight up specularity.

I bet if you took a look at the SDK you could probably hack "proper" specularity into Source since it already supports the alpha channel for the cubemapped surfaces. I don't know why you'd want to since the way it works already looks excellent.